The state of California has approved
a new energy efficiency plan, providing $3.1 billion for programs
from PG&E, Sempra Energy and Edison International. The
state is interested in providing financial benefits for programs
designed to persuade home owners to use less energy.

Specifically,
the $3.1 billion budget approved by the California Public Utilities
Commission will help pave the way to savings of 7,000 gigawatt hours,
150 million metric therms of natural gas, and 1,500 megawatts of
electricity.

City, county, and regional agencies will receive
up to $265 million when they create energy-efficiency efforts.
Home owners will be able to monitor energy-usage statistics when they
log onto the internet, the plan states.

"Capturing the
full energy efficiency potential in the state requires more than
simply providing rebates to support the installation of the latest
and greatest widget," according to Michael Peevey, the state's
commission president.

According to the state commission,
energy savings would be the same as three 500 megawatt power
plants. Furthermore, the new state-led programs would create
between 15,000 and 18,000 new jobs, while also eliminating almost 3
million tons of greenhouse gas emissions across the state.

"The
focus is to shift
priorities away from rebates for widgets to sustained energy
savings in the built environment," California Public Utilities
Commission member Dian Grueneich told the media. "These
numbers are breathtaking in their own right."

Due to the
faltering economy, energy conservation and efficiency have been
popular among consumers and companies interested in reducing costs.

Comments

Threshold

Username

Password

remember me

This article is over a month old, voting and posting comments is disabled

i actually just registered to post this; i recently moved to TX from CA. the taxes are just that bad.

i agree with you, but there's one simple thing that needs to happen in california.

Break the public work unions. California has been spending billions and billions of dollars every year on union labor forces; the most notorious of the latter being the teacher's union. No one told those teachers to cut back on classes and so forth, it's just how they respond. If you don't believe me, the Teacher's Union of California spent 50$ million dollars, last year alone, in political lobbying and organizing. most "corporate giants" don't even spend that much in Federal Govt. political action committees; this obviously a very broken system. If they complain about their wages or benefits, they should point to the head of their union and ask for the aforementioned 50$ million.

another quick note, the top 1% income earners in California pay 54% of all taxes in California . the top 1% isn't a bunch of morons; they disappeared pretty quickly. the past 2 years also mark the beginning of a negative net migration to California (with over whelming numbers).

The migration numbers are worse then they look. What happens is you are loosing middle class and higher tax payers and replacing them with immigrants who take lots of tax money in services and pay little or no tax. California went from being about tops in the US for education to competing with states like Mississippi for the bottom rung. Its truly amazing how quickly idiot politicians were able to destroy the state.

California at the top of the education chart? ... no, no. maybe they spend the most, but California's education system is notoriously one of the worst and the most expensive. The teachers are simply lazy, as a student in HS, in "the second highest rated" public school in California, my AP teachers were just lazy.

The problem comes from the bureaucracy behind the teachers, and the management. The amount of people in management of California's education "management" system is roughly 3/4 of the total amount of teachers.

The other main problem, the Teacher's Union refuses to allow the review of any teacher or staff member. That seems pretty bad but, it actually reaches a number of things. For example, schools don't release any real testing numbers for AP classes or the SAT. Schools are rated solely on the classes that they offer, not the quality of their courses. In the end destroys any real competition in the marketplace of education, and therefore destroys the quality.

"Nowadays, security guys break the Mac every single day. Every single day, they come out with a total exploit, your machine can be taken over totally. I dare anybody to do that once a month on the Windows machine." -- Bill Gates